Values
Our YaleEVAL team shares a set of core values that guide our work.
Collaborative. We consult with, not, to organizations by establishing collaborative partnerships of mutual respect.
Attention to culture and context. A hallmark of our approach is the consideration of cultural1 and contextual2 factors to ensure the work is culturally-situated. We have found that evaluations that take culture and context into account are more responsive to diverse stakeholders and yield more valid and useful results.
Data driven. We encourage the use of data to inform program and organizational decision making.
Empowerment. We believe that everyone has the capacity to make valuable contributions to an evaluation. We work to enhance stakeholder skills and confidence to achieve this purpose.
Equity. We assist partners to collect data that accurately captures the experiences of program participants so that services can be enhanced to improve access, engagement, and quality.
Excellence. We develop high quality evaluations that address the needs and challenges of a program, organization, or service system
Inclusivity. We seek to enhance the skills of program and community stakeholders so that they can actively participate in the evaluation
Integrity. We honor our commitments to co-create and conduct evaluations with our program and community partners that are accurate, feasible, ethical, and useful.
Social justice. We believe that everyone has a right to high quality services and so we seek to ensure that evaluations can enhance access to and effectiveness of publicly-funded services.
1 Cultural factors refer to social identities such as age, ability status, class, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, political affiliation, race, religion, and sexual orientation, among many others (Crusto et al; (2020).
2 Contextual factors include the theories that we use, economic factors, geography, neighborhood, and political dimensions, including power, influence, history, and privilege (Crusto et al; 2020)
Crusto, C. A., Purvin, D., Hoffler, S., Awad, M., & Ozturgut, O. (2020). Cultural sensitivity and responsiveness in evaluation. In R. P. Kilmer and J. R. Cook (Eds.), The Practice of Evaluation: Partnership approaches for community change (pp. 56-80). Sage Publications.